Long After Midnight (20 page)

 
          
You're
one hell of a bookkeeper."

 
          
"I
do my best."

 
          
"Which
isn't very good. I thought you could take a little responsibility."

 
          
"I
try damned hard."

 
          
"You
forgot to check the air in the tires, you get hard beds, you lose things, you
lost a key in Acapulco, to the car trunk, you lost the air-pressure gauge, and
you can't keep books. I have to drive—"

 
          
"I
know, I know, you have to drive all day, and you're tired, and you just got
over a strep infection in Mexico City, and you're afraid it'll come back and you
want to take it easy on your heart, and the least I could do is to keep my nose
clean and the arithmetic neat. I know it all by heart. I'm only a writer, and I
admit I've got big feet."

 
          
"You
won't make a very good writer this way," he said. "It's such a simple
thing, addition."

 
          
"I
didn't do it on purpose!" she cried, throwing the pencil down. "Hell!
I wish I
had
cheated you now. I wish
I'd done a lot of things now. I wish I'd lost that air-pressure gauge on
purpose, I'd have some pleasure in thinking about it and knowing I did it to
spite you, anyway. I wish I'd picked these beds for their hard mattresses, then
I could laugh in my sleep tonight, thinking how hard they are for you to sleep
on, I wish I'd done
that
on purpose.
And now I wish I'd thought to fix the books. I could enjoy laughing about that,
too."

 
          
"Keep
your voice down," he said, as to a child.

 
          
"I'll
be god-damned if I'll keep my voice down."

 
          
"All
I want to know now is how much money you have in the kitty."

 
          
She
put her trembling hands in her purse and brought out all the money. When he
counted it, there was five dollars missing.

 
          
"Not
only do you keep poor books, overcharging me on some item or other, but now
there's five dollars gone from the kitty," he said. "Where'd it
go?"

 
          
"I
don't know. I must have forgotten to put it down, or if I did, I didn't say
what for. Good God, I don't want to add this damned list again. I'll pay what's
missing out of my own allowance to keep everyone happy. Here's five dollars!
Now, let's go out for some air, it's hot in here."

 
          
She
jerked the door wide and she trembled with a rage all out of proportion to the
facts. She was hot and shaking and stiff and she knew her face was very red and
her eyes bright, and when
Senor
Gonzales
bowed to them and wished them a good evening, she had to smile stiffly in
return.

 
          
"Here,"
said her husband, handing her the room key. "And don't, for God's sake,
lose it."

 
          
The
band was playing in the green
zocalo
. It hooted and
blared and tooted and screamed up on the bronze-scrolled bandstand. The square
was bloomed full with people and color, men and boys walking one way around the
block, on the pink and blue tiles, women and girls walking the other way,
flirting their dark olive eyes at one another, men holding each other's elbows
and talking earnestly between meetings, women and girls twined like ropes of
flowers, sweetly scented, blowing in a summer night wind over the cooling tile
designs, whispering, past the vendors of cold drinks and tamales and
enchiladas. The band precipitated "Yankee Doodle" once, to the
delight of the blonde woman with the horn-rim glasses, who smiled wildly and
turned to her husband. Then the band hooted
"La
Cumparsita
"
and
"La
Paloma
Azul
,"
and she felt a good warmth and began to sing a little, under her breath.

 
          
"Don't
act like a tourist," said her husband.

 
          
"I'm
just enjoying myself."

 
          
"Don't
be a damned fool, is all I ask."

 
          
A
vendor of silver trinkets shuffled by.
"Senor?"

 
          
Joseph
looked them over, while the band played, and held up one bracelet, very
intricate, very exquisite. "How much?"

 
          
"
Veinte
pesos, senor."

 
          
"Ho
ho
," said the husband, smiling. "I'll give
you five for it," in Spanish.

 
          
"Five,"
replied the man in Spanish. "I would starve."

 
          
"Don't
bargain with him," said the wife.'

 
          
"Keep
out of this," said the husband, smiling. To the vendor, "Five pesos,
senor."

 
          
"No,
no, I would lose money. My last price is ten pesos."

 
          
"Perhaps
I could give you six," said the husband. "No more than that."

 
          
The
vendor hesitated in a kind of numbed panic as the husband tossed the bracelet
back on the red velvet tray and turned away. "I am no longer interested.
Good night."

 
          
"Senor!
Six pesos, it is
yours!"

 
          
The
husband laughed. "Give him six pesos, darling."

 
          
She
stiffly drew forth her wallet and gave the vendor some peso bills. The man went
away. "I hope you're satisfied," she said.

 
          
"Satisfied?"
Smiling, he flipped the bracelet in the palm of his pale hand. "For a
dollar and twenty-five cents I buy a bracelet that sells for thirty dollars in
the States!"

 
          
"I
have something to confess," she said. "I gave that man ten
pesos."

 
          
"What!"
The husband stopped laughing.

 
          
"I
put a five-peso note in with those one-peso bills. Don't worry, I'll take it
out of my own money. It won't go on the bill I present you at the end of the
week."

 
          
He
said nothing, but dropped the bracelet in his pocket. He looked at the band
thundering into the last bars of
"Ay,
Jalisco
."
Then he said, "You're a fool.
You'd let these people take all your money."

 
          
It
was her turn to step away a bit and not reply. She felt rather good. She
listened to the music.

 
          
"I'm
going back to the room," he said. "I'm tired."

 
          
"We
only drove a hundred miles from
Patzcuaro
."

 
          
"My
throat is a little raw again. Come on."

 
          
They
moved away from the music and the walking, whispering, laughing people. The
band played the "Toreador Song." The drums thumped like great dull
hearts in the summery night. There was a smell of papaya in the air, and green
thicknesses of jungle and waters.

 
          
"I'll
walk you back to the room and come back myself," she said. "I want to
hear the music."

 
          
"Don't
be naive."

 
          
"I
like it, damn it, I like" it, it's good music. Ifs not fake, it's real, or
as real as anything ever gets in this world, that’s why I like it.”

 
          
"When
I don't feel well, I don't expect to have you out running around the town
alone. It isn't fair you see things I don't."

 
          
They
turned in at the hotel and the music was still fairly loud. "If you want
to walk by yourself, go off on a trip by yourself and go back to the United
States by yourself," he said. "Where's the key?"

 
          
"Maybe
I lost it."

 
          
They
let themselves into the room and undressed. He sat on the edge of the bed
looking into the night patio. At last he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and
sighed. "I'm tired. I've been terrible today." He looked at her where
she sat, next to him, and he put out his hand to take her arm. "I'm sorry.
I get all riled up, driving, and then us not talking the language too well. By
evening I'm a mess of nerves."

 
          
"Yes,"
she said.

 
          
Quite
suddenly he moved over beside her. He took hold of her and held her tightly,
his head over her shoulder, eyes shut, talking into her ear with a quiet,
whispering fervency. "You know, we
must
stay together. There's only us, really, no matter what happens, no matter
what trouble we have. I do love you so much, you know that. Forgive me if I'm
difficult. We've got to make it go."

 
          
She
stared over his shoulder at the blank wall and the wall was like her life in
this moment, a wide expanse of nothingness with hardly a bump, a contour, or a
feeling to it. She didn't know what to say or do. Another time, she would have
melted. But there was such a thing as firing metal too often, bringing it to a
glow, shaping it. At last the metal refuses to glow or shape; it is nothing but
a weight. She was a weight now, moving mechanically in his arms, hearing but
not hearing, understanding but not understanding, replying but not replying.
"Yes, we'll stay together." She felt her lips move. "We love
each other." The lips said what they must say, while her mind was in her
eyes and her eyes bored deep into the vacuum of the wall. "Yes."
Holding but not holding him. "Yes."

 
          
The
room was dim. Outside, someone walked in a corridor, perhaps glancing at this
locked door, perhaps hearing their vital whispering as no more than something
falling drop by drop from a loose faucet, a running drain perhaps, or a turned
bookleaf
under a solitary bulb. Let the doors whisper, the
people of the world walked down tile corridors and did not hear.

 
          
"Only
you and I know the things." His breath was fresh. She felt very sorry for
him and herself and the world, suddenly. Everyone was infernally .alone. He was
like a man clawing at a statue. She did not feel herself move. Only her mind,
which was a lightless, dim fluorescent vapor, shifted. "Only you and I
remember," he said, "and if one of us should leave, then half the
memories are gone. So we must stay together because if one forgets the other
remembers."

 
          
Remembers
what? she asked herself. But she remembered instantly, in a linked series,
those parts of incidents in their life together that perhaps he might not
recall; the night at the beach, five years ago, one of the first fine nights
beneath the canvas with the secret
touchings
, the
days at Sunland sprawled together, taking the sun until twilight. Wandering in
an abandoned silver mine, oh, a million things, one touched on and revealed
another in an instant!

 
          
He
held her tight back against the bed now. "Do you know how lonely I am? Do
you know how lonely I make myself with these arguments and fights and all of
it, when I'm tired?" He waited for her to answer, but she said nothing.
She felt his eyelid flutter on her neck. Faintly, she remembered when he had
first flicked his eyelid near her ear. "Spider-eye," she had said,
laughing, then. "It feels like a small spider in my ear." And now
this small lost spider climbed with insane humor upon her neck. There was
something in his voice which made her feel she was a woman on a train going
away and he was standing in the station saying, "Don't go." And her
appalled voice silently cried, "But
you're
the one on a train!
I’m
not going
anywhere!”

 
          
She
lay back, bewildered. It was the first time in two weeks he had touched her.
And the touching had such an immediacy that she knew the wrong word would send
him very far away again.